Uncharted
by Queen of the Girl Scouts
Summary: "I have to warn you, we're getting to the part I haven't read yet." — Azula x Ty Lee. O/S. Repost.


**Uncharted**

* * *

" _Only a burning patience  
will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness"  
\- Pablo Neruda -_

* * *

Azula never thought that she would reach this point in her life.

Ty Lee never doubted that they would.

There was never a moment in time when they thought that they would be in bed beside each other, so silently, with limbs intertwined. Not everything is gone. The scuff marks on the floor are in the same place, and sometimes instead of healing, scars just have widened and spread further. But nothing has to be perfect to be happy.

Azula wakes and has no idea where she is at first, no awareness of her bliss, because this is every night. And she has not slept for an entire night in what feels like centuries; it is normal for her to have to be reassured that the nightmare she was inhabiting was not real.

She shakes Ty Lee and wakes her, and does not regret being seen in a state of vulnerability that would make her want to pluck out the eyes of anyone else who witnessed it. They share a moment, a wordless moment, three kisses on the lips, no more, no less because two would be bad and four would be worse and Ty Lee has gotten used to it, despite how infuriating it is.

Azula falls back to sleep, and Ty Lee tries to force herself to stay awake despite her sore eyes. She wants to feel the soft skin of the woman lying sideways across her bed, resting on top of Ty Lee. But she falls asleep, despite it all.

In the morning, Ty Lee wakes before Azula, a rare occasion. The sunlight falls on her like a crown for her entire body, like it shines on her, or for her, or maybe it is pretty because the sun cannot outshine her, in Ty Lee's infuriatingly optimistic eyes.

Ty Lee walks her fingers up Azula's ivory arm, shadows and sunlight falling over the motion of her skin. Azula rolls over.

"Good morning," Ty Lee says, of course. _It is a good morning because they all are._

"Yes," Azula replies, of course. _It is a good morning because I've lived through the night._

Ty Lee watches her practice, and watches the expression of complete and utter serenity on her beautiful features. It is transfixing and Ty Lee is toying with a flower bed, because despite her closeness with Azula, staring at her like this feels like intrusion onto such a private thing.

Azula showers and Ty Lee is her shadow but not her ghost anymore. She will never be her ghost anymore; she will just be the person who steps in uninvited and Azula barely notices, despite being unnerved by shadows more than half of the time.

She looks as beautiful in water, as she does in fire. Azula does not see those things on Ty Lee, because Azula does not think about what she loves for fear that it will inevitably be taken away.

The day is lazy. Too hot even for Fire Nation blooded girls to go outside, and not with anything particularly interesting happening. Maybe this is a day in the life, but Azula does share something rather personal, as Ty Lee is scrounging around for the last piece of their stupid puzzle Azula tricked her into doing despite it being boring and gross.

"There isn't a last piece, you know."

"I've been looking for like ten minutes!"

"I enjoyed the view." Azula bites her lip; Ty Lee rolls her eyes. "It doesn't have a last piece and it hasn't for… forever, I think. I don't remember where I put it, but it probably belongs to the spider-wasps now."

Ty Lee sighs and brushes her sweaty hair out of her face, leaning against the antique furniture with her legs splayed out on the floor.

"Why did you steal it? Is Zuko actually shockingly good at puzzles?" Ty Lee asks with a teasing smirk.

"No. Zuko is not shockingly good at anything," Azula purrs, even though she thinks he is pretty shockingly good at being the Fire Lord, and pretty shockingly good at decision making in his maturity. "I don't like it when things end."

Ty Lee looks up at her. "I never knew that about you."

"I don't like to talk about myself while lucid," Azula says quietly, reclining like a queen on a throne, just waiting to be knelt beside or fed grapes. "Puzzles, pictures, just most things, honestly. You want to know a secret?"

"Is it violent, dark, sexy…?"

"It's my favorite book. It is not Lao Akai's Manifesto of War, as I have expressed since I could hold books that big. It's called Nameless, and it's about a girl who wakes up in the Earth Kingdom with no memories, and goes seeking them, along the way gaining new ones," Azula says calmly.

"How does it end?"

"I don't know. That's the point of me telling you that. I've never finished it."

"It is your favorite book… but you've never finished it?" Ty Lee does not question Azula's absolute need for things to be put on shelves or apparently some kind of impending doom, or her snide comments and barbed tongue, nor does she question her numerous quirks and faults. But that is something Ty Lee wants, no, _needs_ to know.

"I don't want it to end," Azula says quietly. "It probably stems from my boundless abandonment issues, according doctors who think they are smarter than me."

"Read it to me. I love it when you read to me."

"Because you're afraid that I will find out that you can't read?"

"Because reading is dumb unless it's in a sexy voice."

"Okay," Azula reluctantly agrees, and back in their room, she produces it from beneath underwear and relics of war.

They are lying in bed, with the curtains thrown open. Once upon time they would only be here to have sex; it was the only way to show affection or even anger. But now Ty Lee has her head on Azula's lap, and is attempting to be a good listener.

It must have been two hours when Zuko at last interrupts. "I am so glad you are wearing clothes." Pause. He seems to briefly forget why he is here. "We're having dinner."

Azula agrees to go and Ty Lee remembers when that was a more tireless battle than the Six Hundred Day Siege of Ba Sing Se.

They all sit in the same places. Azula, Ty Lee, Zuko and Mai. And they all tend to eat the same thing; Azula cannot remember the last time anyone mixed their orders up or tried something new. But this is stability, this is balance.

Azula brushes her teeth at the same general time, cleans herself off. Stares in a mirror and sees only herself, just like every other day of the past five years, but every day it is somehow surprising.

Ty Lee has her eyes shut and the old book on her navel. Azula descends on her but Ty Lee puts the book over her mouth. And is not electrocuted to death. These are the small and hilarious victories.

"Read more of my book. Then we can have sex," Ty Lee demands and Azula rubs her shoulder and stares for a moment.

"I have to warn you… we're getting to the part I haven't read yet."

Azula takes the book that Ty Lee is trying to forcibly shove into her hands, and opens it.


End file.
